i'll be some time before Wayland can replace X11. While X11 carries a lot of baggage from days of yore, it also carred useful stuff which is out of scope for Wwayland and pushed down into another layer.

The problem is this heirarchy to put varius X things. For example, should window decoration be dome by the compositor, the shell or the tookit? If its pushed into the upper layers, you burden the protocol with more details (and increased bloat), if it pushed further down applications may not behave consistenly (in the case of window decorations, if the compositor and the toolkit don't agree, you wind up with either doubly-decorated windows or undecroated windows). Likewise there are concept in X that have no equivlent in Wayland, for example there is no concept of "global" screen coordinates. There are unasnwered question on accessibility as to where THOSE hooks will go (if we put in higher up its more consistent but it breaks isolation, if its pushed downwards accessibly feature may differ or even be unavaiable among applications).

XWaylnd is a lot easier to realize since we know what layers go where on X, but ultimately we're trying to move away from that.

II) “X is Network Transparent.” Wrong. Its not. Core X and DRI-1 were network transparent. No one uses either one. Shared-Memory, DRI-2 and DRI-3000 are NOT network transparent, they do NOT work over the network. Modern day X comes down to synchronous, poorly done VNC. If it was poorly done, async, VNC then maybe we could make it work. But its not. Xlib is synchronous (and the movement to XCB is a slow one) which makes networking a NIGHTMARE.

If we can't even get linux audio cleaned up, what makes anybody think we can get linux graphics straightened out?

Also, what's with this "Wayland" crap for a name? Shouldn't it be PulseVideoKit.d or something?_________________History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. -- Abba Eban

If we can't even get linux audio cleaned up, what makes anybody think we can get linux graphics straightened out?

Also, what's with this "Wayland" crap for a name? Shouldn't it be PulseVideoKit.d or something?

isn't it Smithers' first name in the Simpsons?

I was hoping they were going to make it part of systemd_________________when you're sitting back, in your rose pink Cadillac
Making bets on Kentucky Derby Day
I'll be in my basement room, with a needle and a spoon
And another girl to take my pain away...

Once upon a time, Wayland was going to remove the networking functionality which is one of X's strong points. Networking was going to be added as an unimportant "afterthought" which didn't perform as well. Since X works just fine (I'm not saying it can't or shouldn't be improved), I don't see the problem Wayland is solving._________________lolgov. 'cause where we're going, you don't have civil liberties.

Once upon a time, Wayland was going to remove the networking functionality which is one of X's strong points. Networking was going to be added as an unimportant "afterthought" which didn't perform as well. Since X works just fine (I'm not saying it can't or shouldn't be improved), I don't see the problem Wayland is solving.

Once upon a time, Wayland was going to remove the networking functionality which is one of X's strong points. Networking was going to be added as an unimportant "afterthought" which didn't perform as well. Since X works just fine (I'm not saying it can't or shouldn't be improved), I don't see the problem Wayland is solving.

strong points? It doesn't even really work. So no, it is not a 'strong point'._________________Study finds stunning lack of racial, gender, and economic diversity among middle-class white males

II) “X is Network Transparent.” Wrong. Its not. Core X and DRI-1 were network transparent. No one uses either one. Shared-Memory, DRI-2 and DRI-3000 are NOT network transparent, they do NOT work over the network. Modern day X comes down to synchronous, poorly done VNC. If it was poorly done, async, VNC then maybe we could make it work. But its not. Xlib is synchronous (and the movement to XCB is a slow one) which makes networking a NIGHTMARE.

Once upon a time, Wayland was going to remove the networking functionality which is one of X's strong points. Networking was going to be added as an unimportant "afterthought" which didn't perform as well. Since X works just fine (I'm not saying it can't or shouldn't be improved), I don't see the problem Wayland is solving.

But I bet XWayland will have its time while we are waiting for X12....

Thanks, I'll take a look at both links.

I just started with the X vs. Wayland one, and the first few (skimming them) seemed more like justification after the fact. I'll read more carefully later._________________lolgov. 'cause where we're going, you don't have civil liberties.

I never said it was network transparent. But running an X server on my Windows laptop and running the application remotely is pretty useful. Works better than any *nix based VNC solution I've seen (and they all suck)._________________lolgov. 'cause where we're going, you don't have civil liberties.

Because mainframes and graphical dumb terminals are so mind bogglingly niche there's literally no rational reason what so ever to design an entire graphical architecture around that paradigm. It makes far more sense now to have a local display server and hook mainframey terminal services into that as a plugin to satisfy that niche. The X Windowing System architecture was a great design for the computing users of the 80's, but we're 3 decades on from that point. Nowadays the vast majority of computing devices are small and personal, and rarely with a consistent and reliable network connection, which renders a network display server utterly pointless and needlessly incurs a wasteful overhead penalty and added latency.

I am using one of my Raspberry Pi machines as X server (Gentoo as OS) to work on a large PC which is running simulations (and Gentoo is the OS again, thank you). The X server produces zero noise. The PC is elsewhere. Maybe 3 decades have just not been enough for you to understand the beauty of the X11 concept.
The more things change the more they stay the same.

I. I'm no dev, but "wrapping it in more and more extensions and plugins" doesn't sound the least bit like an attempt to fix anything.

II. A lack of people who understand something isn't a flaw of the design. I'm not defending the design or suggesting it doesn't need work.

III. Lacks a coherent thought.

IV. "Huge and stupid." Well, that's well argued. So we're in agreement that simplifying it and removing unnecessary components was a Good Thing.

V. I've never prayed while using X. Sounds like a technical problem with FUD thrown in for effect.

VI. They don't like how fonts are handled.

My favorite though is the complaint in VII that the acknowledge had been fixed. LOL. Though IX is good too.... "a nitpick, but also valid." LOL. They're all nitpicks but also valid.

What it really comes down to is someone didn't like X. There are definitely some issues that need to be fixed, but they didn't address why Wayland and not actually improving X (perhaps assburger's led to some uncooperative interactions? No idea, just asking... it happens). OK, technically they did, but nothing other than "we don't like X." I'm not even saying starting over is a bad thing, but if they're going to kill functionality of X for the sake of composting and wavy window effects, then I'm not interested. The first thing I do on any environment is to disable the ghastly "eye candy." Candy rots your teeth, it'll rot your brain too :mrgreen:

What's really missing is an RDP equivalent for *nix. A shame they didn't work on that instead.

Haven't looked at the X12 link yet. Hopefully distros maintain X along the way._________________lolgov. 'cause where we're going, you don't have civil liberties.

I am using one of my Raspberry Pi machines as X server (Gentoo as OS) to work on a large PC which is running simulations (and Gentoo is the OS again, thank you). The X server produces zero noise. The PC is elsewhere. Maybe 3 decades have just not been enough for you to understand the beauty of the X11 concept.
The more things change the more they stay the same.

Congratulations for being the 1 in 1,000,000 who actually makes use of X11. For the other 99.9999% of us it's a liability._________________

juniper wrote:

you experience political reality dilation when travelling at american political speeds. it's in einstein's formulas. it's not their fault.

Last edited by aidanjt on Thu Oct 24, 2013 7:25 pm; edited 1 time in total

Basically if you watch the presentation (or read the phoronix article that is basically the same) the biggest complaint of the Xorg developers that moved to Wayland or mir is that they are not allowed to touch the coreX protocol, the recent move of starting the development of X12 is clearly a step to solve this problem, with X12 also the coreX can be changed.
We'll see what will happen, is too soon to call a winner since nobody is really running._________________Truck!!
A posse ad esse non valet consequentia
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Ssssh, don't give them any ideas, otherwise they might actually merge a display server into systemd. So called "reasons" might be:

bootsplash

graphical configuration of devices, like in Windows

displaying the journal on the screen all the time, of course transported via a nice binary protocol (close to the on-disk format) added as an extension to the display server (the extension can't be disabled, though)

Not sure what I think about Wayland. My main concerns are network transparency (don't know if it's solved in a nice way now) and window decorations. I think the latter belong into the compositor for consistency reasons. For novice users this would also make it easier to kill hung applications by just hitting the close button and let the window manager / compositor kill them (just like it's done in KDE)._________________Unix philosophy: "Do one thing and do it well."systemd: "Do everything and do it wrong."

Because mainframes and graphical dumb terminals are so mind bogglingly niche there's literally no rational reason what so ever to design an entire graphical architecture around that paradigm. It makes far more sense now to have a local display server and hook mainframey terminal services into that as a plugin to satisfy that niche. The X Windowing System architecture was a great design for the computing users of the 80's, but we're 3 decades on from that point. Nowadays the vast majority of computing devices are small and personal, and rarely with a consistent and reliable network connection, which renders a network display server utterly pointless and needlessly incurs a wasteful overhead penalty and added latency.

I am using one of my Raspberry Pi machines as X server (Gentoo as OS) to work on a large PC which is running simulations (and Gentoo is the OS again, thank you). The X server produces zero noise. The PC is elsewhere. Maybe 3 decades have just not been enough for you to understand the beauty of the X11 concept.
The more things change the more they stay the same.

That was an insightful, articulate statement. Who hijacked wildhorse's account?! _________________History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. -- Abba Eban

Ssssh, don't give them any ideas, otherwise they might actually merge a display server into systemd.

It would make more sense than many of the other things that have been assimilated._________________History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. -- Abba Eban